Sunday morning is the moment of truth for the College Football Playoff selection committee.
If TCU beats Iowa State on Saturday and Baylor handles Kansas State, the Big 12 will have two champions and the committee will have to sort through their resumes and decide who belongs on top. Tuesday night, Jeff Long punted on questions about how the committee will treat the Big 12's co-champions, but with Florida State and Ohio State separating No. 3 TCU and No. 6 Baylor, it seems the Bears' only hope this week is the committee
a) Being impressed by a win over No. 9 Kansas State
b) Giving them a bump over TCU for being what would be the Big 12's automatic qualifying bowl candidate
If Ohio State and Florida State both win, the difference could be a playoff spot. With all the haranguing and talk about public relations and bias and #BaylorBeatTCU, reality is there's a strong case for both teams being included in the top four and both teams being ranked over the other. It's not as simple as head-to-head, but it's not as simple as "TCU played Minnesota," either.
I do not work for a PR firm (it's good money if you can get it, though), but if I did, here's how I'd lay out the case for both sides.
TCU
So if you're arguing with a Baylor fan, feel free to use any of those little tidbits. Unless you're a Baylor fan, in which case, you should use this list.
Baylor
The committee's website explicitly states it values "conference championships won" but until Sunday, we have no idea exactly how much those trophies are valued among the five principles the 12 commitee members will weigh.
The next two principles the committee will weigh are "head-to-head results and results against common opponents."
The moment of truth is coming, though. Bob Bowlsby was correct this week when he reiterated what he told me last month: The Big 12 won't recommend a champion to the commitee. He's also incorrect.
This explains what that means.
I fully expect Baylor to get some semblance of a larger bump than TCU if it beats Kansas State and wins the Big 12's automatic qualifying bid, but would that bump would be a lot bigger if it didn't have to share the title with TCU? Will the bump it does get be big enough to leapfrog TCU?
If you weigh out the five principles, it would look like this:
We have no way of definitively knowing which team will get the nod.
That changes Sunday morning at 11:45 a.m.
KANSAS STATE 'DOING WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO'
Bill Snyder sculpts his offense around the talent on his roster and that's been especially true in 2014. Jake Waters has attempted 322 passes through just 11 games, an average of 29.3 attempts per game.
That's up from just 20 per game a year ago (Daniel Sams averaged four additional pass attempts a game) and the highest number of pass attempts since Josh Freeman's final season in 2008, when Ron Prince was the Wildcats' coach.
The reason why is rather obvious: Its receiver, Tyler Lockett, and quarterback, Waters, are K-State's two best players.
"You do what you have to do," Snyder said. "We try to be balanced in terms of our offense, and sometimes things work a little bit better than others and you tend to lean in that direction."
Kansas State was in the top four of the Big 12 in yards per carry in each of the past two seasons, but has fallen to sixth in the statistic this season. Meanwhile, it leads the Big 12 in passing yards per attempt, at 9.1, ahead of both high-flying Baylor (8.8) and TCU (7.8). Only five FBS teams have a higher average this season.
"Teams who have chosen to take away the run, then we try to throw the ball a little bit better," Snyder said. "I don't have any discomfort with anything we do if we do it well."
THE BIGGEST ISSUE WITH 'ONE TRUE CHAMPION'
Bob Bowlsby dialed into the Big 12 coaches teleconference on Monday morning intending to talk about the league's decision to offer multi-year scholarships and the full cost of attendance to athletes.
The league also boasted three teams in the top 10 of both human polls.
Instead, half of Bowlsby's questions centered around a silly slogan that's become a gigantic distraction and source of humiliation for the league. Besides the inaccuracy of the slogan and Bowlsby's failed defenses of it, that's the biggest reason it has to go.
With all the noise emanating from a slogan that influences very little, it's too hard to hear anything else coming out of conference headquarters in Irving, Texas.
Broadcasting that the Big 12 has "One True Champion" has produced mountains of punchlines and criticism and very little positive publicity from a round-robin schedule that should inspire at least a few slaps on the back. It's astounding that people are surprised a conference that misrepresents its number of members could also misrepresent its number of champions.
"'One True Champion' is really about everybody playing everybody," Bowlsby said. "That's the right way to do it. We believe that playing everyone every year is the right way to determine a champion, even if it ends in a tie."
In 2012, the Big 12 crowned Oklahoma co-champions alongside Kansas State, even though the Wildcats beat Oklahoma in Norman months earlier. That year, though, neither team was competing for a chance to play for the national title, and Oklahoma's title celebration and trophy presentation was greeted with little more than a shrug.
This year, it's naturally garnered much more attention because of its relevance t to the national title race. By now, what are the positives of keeping it? There's no shame in admitting you made a mistake. This is just a slogan. The Big Ten changed the names of its divisions after the disaster that was "Legends" and "Leaders" when it expanded to 12 teams and two divisions.
If the league crowns two champions this year, it will have done so in two of the four seasons since it did away with divisional play and a championship game.
The only thing the Big 12 is doing if it doesn't ditch the slogan is digging itself in a deeper hole every time it doesn't crown "One True Champion."
RHOADS GETS VOTE OF CONFIDENCE THAT COUNTS
I wouldn't confuse it with anything official, but Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard sure sounded like he was issuing a vote of confidence in favor of Paul Rhoads on a radio show earlier this week.
Winning in Ames isn't easy, and Pollard sounds like a man ready to cut his head coach some slack.
"It's a place that you've got to have a chip on your shoulder and you've got to try to do something that others maybe are afraid to do or couldn't do or don't want to try to do," Pollard said, via the Des Moines Register. "That's what inspires all of us to be here, and it's to climb a mountain that others have never gotten to the top. I look forward to continuing that journey with coach Rhoads and hopefully getting there."
It's the right move, but I'm betting finances influence the decision, too. Rhoads would be due $750,000 for each year remaining on his contract if he were fired. Considering he's contracted through 2021, that's a price tag of $5.25 million if the Cyclones wanted to make a change.
Money aside, Rhoads deserves a chance to try and rediscover the success he had early in his tenure at Iowa State.
FUN WITH NUMBERS
TWEET OF THE WEEK
Bill Snyder, letter author, has struck again.
POWER RANKINGS
Thanksgiving is in the rear-view mirror. 'Tis the season, friends. As such, here are the Christmas movies that are annual appointment viewing. Ranked, of course.
Confessions of someone born in 1987: I have never seen any of the Die Hard movies.
This was honestly one of my goals for this season and game. Coach Snyder is the epitome of college football coaches! pic.twitter.com/AGmw1SCpX1
— Clint Trickett (@CJTrickett9) December 2, 2014
